Tied on a size 4 TMC 300; body is braided mottled orange and olive chenille, lower tail is olive marabou, back is dark brown zonker secured with copper wire, head is olive 6/0. Another one that I had planned to use for the pike clave...

redneckfishrman

08-18-2004, 04:55 PM

Nice!!!!!!

flytyer

08-18-2004, 08:59 PM

Chris--

If you tie the same fly with a gold or gold and orange tinsel chenile, Cactus Chenile, Estaz, etc. body, it is even more effective for smallies (and large browns) for those rivers with fallfish in them (such as the Delaware).

flyfisha1

08-18-2004, 09:18 PM

Looking at this fly again this afternoon, I wondered why I hadn't mounted a few strands of orange Krystal Flash along the flanks and secured them with the copper wire. When I re-do this pattern I'll try the chenille suggestion and will also do a variant with the Krystal Flash.

flytyer

08-18-2004, 09:33 PM

Chris,

A brown rabbit strip wing with olive marabou as a short under tail with gold tinsel chenile was a very effective fly on the Delaware way back when I lived in northeast PA. I started to tie it for 2 reasons: 1) all the fallfish in the Delaware; and 2) one of my friends and fishing partners at the time used a gold jointed Rapalla and he was outfishing me badly in the late evening and early morning. The brown rabbit Zonker with the olive marabou under tail and gold tinsel chenile body let me hook nearly as many as Cal with his Rapalla.

flyfisha1

08-18-2004, 09:38 PM

This gives me further affirmation that patterns randomly created at the vise have most likely been done somewhere before. This particular pattern was one that I just "came up with" while sitting at the vise one day; funny that you tied it all those years ago! This is a reason that I don't bother naming any of the stuff I come up with.

flytyer

08-18-2004, 09:49 PM

And I'm sure that others were probably using similar flies before I came up with the brown rabbit wing with olive marabou and gold tinsel chenile to imitate fallfish. In fact, my father used to use the the old Dark Edson Tiger (golden-yellow chenile body, flat gold tinsel ribbing, brown bucktail wing, jungle cock cheek) on the Delaware and Lackawaxen Rivers because they caught fish for him. The Dark Edson Tiger is also a passable fallfish imitation, although it works best if you use the original golden-yellow (really a light gold color) chenile body-not the lemon yellow I almost always see it tied with these days.

Back when I tied it with brown rabbit (the very early 70's), Zonkers were nearly unknown and I had to cut my own rabbit strips from tanned, dyed rabbit skins I bought at Tandy's Leather.

But I digressed, I've been amazed over the many years I've been tying and fly fishing how often people come up with the same type of fly (materials might be a little different) to solve the same problem of imitation. It would be very hard to have a truly new and different fly for the same imitation or fishing problemthat someone else hasn't done something very similarly before.

flyfisha1

08-18-2004, 09:51 PM

I had an idea this evening for something that I think is unique, but it will have to wait until I get an hour to sit down at the vise and work it out. That's not likely to happen until the Olympics have passed.